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Table Games How much do you buy in with at craps?

Discussion in 'Table Games' started by Woman2Blame, Feb 24, 2014.

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  1. Woman2Blame

    Woman2Blame Tourist

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    How much do you buy in with at a $5 table? How about a $10 table?

    Not trying to get too personal with finances here! So maybe "what percent of your gambling money would you buy into one game with?" is a better way to phrase that if you don't want to talk about dollar amounts.

    The reason I ask is because I think I buy in with too little, which is causing me to lose at craps:evillaugh. What I buy in with doesn't allow me to play long enough to have a shot at winning, unless I'm lucky with the first shooter. When I first started playing craps two years ago, I had beginners luck big time, so I got away with buying in with $40 and turning it into $300.

    Not so much anymore.

    If I come to a $5 table with $50-60, bet the pass line and 6/8, and the 1st and 2nd shooters 7 out fairly quickly.....well then my $50-$60 won't get me very far. I think I need to start coming to a table with a couple hundred, so that I can can make it through the first couple 7's. Otherwise, I just have to hope the first couple throws of the dice are very good to me!

    I guess my hesistation is that if I lose $200 at one craps table...well that's a pretty good chunk of my gambling money for the trip. I usually budget about $1k for gambling (for Craps, Slots, and maybe a little roulette) for a 5 day trip.
     
  2. DonnyC

    DonnyC VIP Whale

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    Bad logic.

    You have as much chance as getting 7's later in the game.

    More money allows you to play longer...because you have more to play with, aka loose. It doesn't change the odds at all.

    You don't have a better chance of 'going on a roll' the longer you play.

    You have just as much chance of hitting your points right away as you have with a larger bankroll and more time.
     
  3. hillwood24

    hillwood24 High-Roller

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    Yeah, $60 is way too little to buy-in with if you want to have a legitimate chance to withstand the variance. I'd say you should buy in with at least $300 on a $10 table. But that's just my opinion.
     
  4. Woman2Blame

    Woman2Blame Tourist

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    True that it won't change the odds - I guess I'm just sick of walking up to a table, losing $50, and walking away within a span of 5-10 minutes. I might as well go flush a $50 bill down the toilet. If I could at least stick around for a little longer, shoot a couple times, and get a few free drinks out of the deal, then I could at least say that I enjoyed myself, even if I lose. lol :) :beer:

    When I've played at the casino here at home lately, it seems like the first shooter 7's out pretty quickly....so if I bought in with $60 and had $30 on the table....well then I don't have much of a chance to redeem myself before I have to leave the table. Sure, the chance of hitting the point doesn't change....but I would at least have more time at the table.

    3 months til our next Vegas trip....thinking I should start putting a little more away for a bigger bankroll.

    :peace:
     
  5. ex507

    ex507 Low-Roller

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    $5 table $200 buy in. Worked for me the one and only time i played. I am new in the craps business.
     
  6. patroyal2014

    patroyal2014 Tourist

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    Craps is unwinnable, but that is just me. If you want to win, learn card counting.


     
  7. Ezzy711

    Ezzy711 VIP Whale

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    I buy in between 300-500 on a $10. Just because you buy in for more has nothing to do with how much you walk away with. You walk away when you feel you've lost enough. You have to be prepared for the table to swing one way or another for a while. When you feel the table is cold or you are losing too much, walk away with chips....you don't have to lose them all to quit.
     
  8. numeno

    numeno VIP Whale

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    If you plan on staying at the table a while, I feel you must have at least 10X your minimum bet and closer to 20X would be much better.

    This is not $5 or $10. This is whatever your passline+ odds + place 6/8 come up to. On a $5 table this is at least $17 if you take no odds and worst case that the point is never 6 or 8.



    If you want your money to last longer, make fewer bets. Like only do pass+odds or only do place 6/8 or ect... I assume if you plan slots you don't do max bet, you do smaller bets. The same concept exists in table tables.
     
  9. Woman2Blame

    Woman2Blame Tourist

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    Makes sense. Good rule of thumb
     
  10. engicedave

    engicedave VIP Whale

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    On a $5 table, I buy in at $300-400.
    $10 it'll buy in at about $500-600

    With the small buy in you're doing, you might as well play a slot machine.

    You are buying in to live or die on one or two rolls
     
  11. BayouBengal

    BayouBengal VIP Whale

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    Even at $200 on a $5 craps table you can lose quickly as I did last week. I was taking max odds on my pass line for the most part with places on 6 and 8 when they weren't the point. I got felted pretty quickly.
     
  12. NeonTurtle14

    NeonTurtle14 I Run the Vegas Hotdog Stand

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    I usually take $500 to a $5 table or $1000 to a $10 table. While it's nice if I don't have to gamble that deep, it keeps me playing for a while and riding out the ups and downs of the table.
     
  13. Chuck2009x

    Chuck2009x VIP Whale

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    Same here.

    But in the end, it comes down to where your psychological pain point is. The point where you walk away. That could be a raw $ amount, or it could be a % of your buy in.

    For some people, buying in for a larger amount helps raise their psychological pain point, and others it doesn't. Some people don't mind getting felted and others would never lose more than 50% of their buy in.
     
  14. hornhiyo

    hornhiyo Low-Roller

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    I understand that the more you buy-in for, the more flexibility it gives you, however, some of the amounts seem excessive.

    $500 and $1000 buy-ins are for $10 and $25 tables.

    I'd think on a $5 table, $200 would be plenty. Assuming you have any success at all.

    A standard pass line bet with odds and placing a couple of numbers will set you back $30-$35. If you were to lose your bet on the first six shooters, you'd lose your $200.

    Who the hell wants to put more money into that cold a table? :thumbsdown:
     
  15. Gaylord Focker

    Gaylord Focker Low-Roller

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    I usually like to make my buy-ins a little larger (i.e. $300-500 at $5 table). You have to get out of that mindset that you buy in for a small amount and need to either win early or leave empty handed.

    Having a deeper stack allows me to play the pass line with max odds every time and I like to play the inside numbers along with my pass line and will press my odds if/when the table warms up.

    This takes discipline though because if the table doesn't feel right or you are losing bets too fast, you have to pull your money off the table to avoid losing it all. It's a mistake, IMO, to plan on buying in for just enough to play 2-3 shooters and either keep playing (if you win) or walk away empty handed. Craps is a game of odds, and they won't change based on your buy-in amount.
     
  16. 7out

    7out Tourist

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    I like to have at least $500 for the $5 table - allows me to chase if/when I start losing. I'm not saying it's a good strategy, but at least I'm not going back into my pocket to chase. It's pretty easy to turn them back into cash if I have any left at the end of the session.
     
  17. Kickin

    Kickin Flea

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    Sure you do. Just like you have a better chance of hitting a royal in VP the longer you play and so on. I agree with the gist of what you're saying though, and this is no reason to justify gambling longer since you just stand to lose more.

    Not just you. Go ahead and add me to that group. I always lose but I know a lot of it is because I go in severely under bankrolled. I usually only buy-in for $500 and have over $100 on the table with odds. So I can't survive more than a few bad shooters. To me craps is like playing the lotto, I know I'll lose but I throw a few bucks into it sometimes for the experience.
     
  18. stackinchips

    stackinchips VIP Whale

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    The truth is you're both right and you're both wrong. Having a larger bankroll allows you to handle the variance of a craps table better. You're right in that the odds don't change, but the longer you play the better the chance that you hit a big run of positive variance. It's sort of like baseball. The odds of you hitting a homerun on each at bat is the same. However, the more at bats you have the better the chance that you'll hit a homerun. Risk of ruin goes up the smaller your buy in.

    If you want a casino comparison, if you only bet the number 23 on roulette, and you buy in for $20 and play $5 on 23 for four spins. Now let's consider you buy in for $100 and play $5 on 23 for 20 spins. On each spin you're just as likely to hit 23 regardless of how much you buy in for, however, you have a better chance of hitting your 23 at least once on 20 spins than you do on 4 spins.

    For the OP, when I used to have a small bankroll on my trips, I didn't play Craps all that much, simply because the variance requires a bigger bankroll, and like you I didn't want to buy in for a big chunk of my trip bankroll and lose it. You really only have two options though, you can either not play craps, or if you must play craps, stick to playing minimal action, even if that means exposing yourself to a higher HA. For instance, if I was only buying in for $60, I might just play pass line and single odds, or I might just place the 6/8, or I might just place the point instead of playing PL + Odds. If you can't enjoy playing craps like that, I would just pass on craps until your bankroll can grow to handle it, or at least wait until later in my trip, so I can handle it. For instance, if on the next to last day of my trip I had $800 of my 1k bankroll, I'd play craps and buyin for a couple hundred. That way you know even if you lose that buy in you're not sitting there broke the last three days.

    I also found in my experience as my bankroll grew, that I had better results with larger buyins. In my personal experience this is for two reasons. The first is that with the bigger buy in I rode the variance roller coaster better, because a run of bad luck didn't wipe me out, and I was still at the table when the better rolls came. The other thing I noticed, is that at craps when I start to get down to a small amount of chips (like less than $30-40) I would just start "going all in" and throw it all out there and press things harder than usual, just because I was going for broke on that buy in. It rarely worked out well. That can and still does happen with a bigger bankroll but it's more rare. My small buy in days resulted in two outcomes, either me being felted, or me cashing out a big winner. Obviously the former was much more common than the latter. Now when I buy in for larger amounts, my sessions usually end with me calling it a night, and my results are either a partial loss, a small win, or a big score. I rarely get felted (although I do lose what I used to buy in for quite a bit). The big difference is the sessions where I play for hours and leave even or up 10-25% of my buy in. That almost never happened when I was buying in for $100 bucks or whatever.
     
  19. stackinchips

    stackinchips VIP Whale

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    It all depends on what you're betting style is. Whoever posted 10x-20x your average starting bet is probably pretty spot on. Playing PL + Full odds, and 26/27 (52/54) across takes a bigger BR, than just PL + FO and the 6/8, which takes a bigger bankroll than PL +FO, which takes a bigger bankroll than PL + 2X odds which takes.....


    Some of this comes down to how big of a session are you wanting to put in. If you're just hitting a table to see how it goes or for something to do for a bit before you grab dinner, vs. buying in looking to play for a few hours or more.

    If you're looking to put in a short session of around an hour, you're going to be good with 10x your starting bet 99% of the time. You want an all nighter you should be at 20x or more.
     
  20. wpete

    wpete High-Roller

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    I only play $5 tables and will generally start with $60. I figure if that goes quick, then it wasn't meant to be.
     
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